By GREER FAY CASHMANDOES PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu believe in peace? Maybe not.(photo credit: REUTERS)
■ THE SORRY situation of the Israel Broadcasting Authority is painfully evident in the comprehensive program of the 10th annual conference of Israeli journalists taking place in Eilat from November 13 to 16. There are very few representatives of the IBA among the speakers or moderators, and there are none among the prizewinners.Of the many subjects to be discussed, including the paucity of Arabs in the communications industry and the racial profiling of Ethiopians, the IBA will undoubtedly be mentioned several times in the course of a panel discussion on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy as minister of communications. Israel Radio’s Aryeh Golan will be the moderator, and panelists include Avi Weiss, the director-general of the embattled Channel 2, which is under threat of closure; MK Shelly Yacimovich, who was employed at different times by the IBA and Channel 2; Likud MK and Knesset House Committee chairman Yoav Kisch, who has reportedly come to a salaries cut agreement with IBA employees; chairman of the Second Broadcasting Authority Eva Madjiboj; Elad Mann, the legal counsel to Hatzlaha, the Consumers’ Movement for the Promotion of a Fair Society and Economy; Rotem Abrutzki, chairman of the Tel Aviv Journalists Union; and Itay Landsberg Nevo, head of documentary films at Channel 1.Another interesting topic for frustrated television viewers and radio listeners is the matter of control over the microphone, which will be moderated by Haim Yavin, who for many years was known as Mr.Television. In other words, should the anchor of a radio or TV talk show express his or her opinion and override that of an interviewee, or should the only opinion be that of the interviewee? Lifetime achievement awards will be presented to Roni Daniel of Channel 2, Stella Lieber of Globes and Yehezkel Adiram of Yediot Aharonot.■ SINGER, ACTOR, writer, current-affairs commentator and TV host Yehoram Gaon, after agreeing to pose for countless selfies, realized that the selfie has become a syndrome. It doesn’t really mean anything to the people in the photograph, but it has become obsessive for people to photograph themselves with anything that moves and even with inanimate objects such as a cake, a pipe or tree or against a landmark building. How much more so with a familiar face from the television screen.Gaon did not refer to himself as a celebrity, but obviously celebrities and well-known political figures are the No. 1 targets for selfies. Of course, none of the people who agree to pose for selfies can even hazard a guess at how many times they’ve done so, but in thinking about it, Gaon came up with the idea that it would be interesting to aim for the largest selfie collage in the world, and has asked anyone who has a selfie of themselves with him to send it to his Facebook. He may be on the verge of starting a new trend, with other celebrities following suit.■ AS IT does every year, Haifa-headquartered Yad Ezer Lahaver, founded in 2001 by Baruch and Shimon Sabag in 2001 to care for and provide a warm home for Holocaust survivors, last week held a Holocaust survivors’ beauty contest in Haifa, with Sara Netanyahu, the wife of the prime minister, as the guest of honor.After crowning Anna Grinis, 76, who was born in Russia two days before the outbreak of the war, Netanyahu told the survivors that she felt as though she were one of them because her father, the late Shmuel Ben-Artzi, lost all of his family in the Holocaust. In praise of the survivors, Netanyahu said that after enduring the most terrible atrocities in the history of mankind, they had chosen life, had chosen to raise families, to work, to create and to continue living.■ ANYONE LOOKING for former American-Israeli basketball star Tal Brody on November 19 will find him at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, where he will participate in a special Q&A session following the prerelease screening of On the Map, a Dani Menkin film produced by Nancy Spielberg and John Weinbach.The film is a documentary that takes viewers back to the surprise victory of the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball club’s championship game against the four-time defending European champions CSKA at a time when the Cold War was at its zenith. No one believed in 1977 that the Israeli team stood a chance against the proven Russian might.
Brody was the captain of the team, and after its triumph famously declared in broadly American Hebrew: “We are on the map and we will stay on the map.” It was a prophetic declaration. Israel is firmly on the map not only in basketball but in the world of sport in general.